Click.
As if she knows exactly what she’s doing, Seren sits back in her chair, unhurried, almost peaceful. She drags the Codex toward her, presses the twin latches either side of the silver clasp, and opens the forbidden book.
She fucking opened it.
“That’s my girl,” Teddy breathes into her hair, his hands wrapped around the nape of her neck.
I fight the urge to tell him to focus, but Kael’s rough hand rests on my thigh, so I shove down the hypocrisy.
She gasps. Her elation lighting up the room brighter than the Codex’s flare.
“I did it,” she breathes. “I’m actually a witch.” She says the words as if she’s shocked—as if she still doubted her lineage.
Elandor blinks once, twice—then bursts into motion like a man possessed.
“Of course you’re a witch!” he crows, darting forward with an enthusiasm so wild it nearly topples a stack of scrolls. “Did I nottellyou that? Stars above and shadows below, this—this is monumental!”
He’s already circling the table, eyes wide behind his spectacles, muttering under his breath as though afraid the air itself might forget what just happened. “This Codex hasn’t been opened in a decade—perhaps more! Good gods, child, you’ve just rewritten history!”
Seren’s smile trembles somewhere between awe and terror, her gaze flicking to Teddy, who’s watching her like she’s made of both fire and glass.
Elandor leans closer, the edges of his robe brushing against the tome. “It’s been a long time since this tome was last in the possession of the witches,” he continues, almost reverent now. “Remarkable. Simply remarkable.”
“Realm-changing, you might say,” Mavyrn interjects softly.
Her voice cuts through the haze of excitement like lightning splitting the sky. Every head turns.
She sits a little apart from the others, half in shadow, her expression unreadable. For once, her usual hardness has splintered—something raw flickers behind her eyes. Not fear, exactly. Something keener.
Elandor huffs, too caught up in his own rapture to notice the shift. “Realm-changing, yes. But my dear woman, this is so much more:it’sprogress.The Codex was never meant to sleep forever.”
But Mavyrn’s lips curl, the ghost of a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “No,” she murmurs. “It wasn’t.”
Kael’s hand tightens on my thigh, a subtle warning. I don’t take my eyes off her.
For the first time, I think I see it—the faintest tremor in her composure.
Excitement, yes… but not the clean kind. The kind that tastes of expectation. Of a plan years in the making finally falling into place.
Seren’s still smiling, oblivious to the undercurrent, her blood drying dark against the Codex’s edge.
Elandor beams like a man witnessing divinity.
And Mavyrn?—
Mavyrn watches the book like it’s finally come home.
Elandor’s hands tremble as he reaches for the Codex, the reflected light of its sigils dancing across his face like fractured Stars. “Careful,” Seren warns under her breath, but the scholar ignores her, his fingers hovering just above the page as though touching divinity itself.
The Codex snaps shut like the jaws of a great beast—a response to Elandor’s closeness.
The Archivist yanks his hand back, cradling it to his chest as if he almost lost it.
“It doesn’t want you, Elandor. It wants the witch,” Kael asserts, his voice cutting and concise.
“Do you feel that?” Seren whispers, completely oblivious to the rest of the chamber. The book hums—quietly at first, like the murmur of an unseen choir. The air vibrates with it, stirring the candles until their flames gutter low and bend inward, drawn toward the open tome.
“It’salive,” Rubi murmurs.
